Sunday 24 July 2016

The Yes Inside a No (Hosea 1:2-10)



(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 24, 2016, Proper 12)

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A Confession:
Prophetic Pain and Preacherly Painkillers

Many of us are familiar with the process of surgery. In the grand scheme of things, surgery is a healing process. But it begins with an incision. A wound. Which means that after surgery, there is pain. In most cases, of course, the doctor will prescribe painkiller to soften our suffering.

The prophets in the Bible, like Amos and Hosea, are like surgeons. Ultimately, they hope to heal the people of Israel. But to do so, they must put Israel under the knife. They must deliver a difficult message. The prophet’s words are like a scalpel, cutting open the people of Israel, digging out a disease. The prophet’s words cause a wound. They hurt.

It’s only natural that when we read the prophets, we feel the pain. And so the typical role of the preacher becomes one of supplying a painkiller. Sermons become shots of sedative.

I say all of this as a confession. The last two weeks, we read horrifying prophecies from Amos, who proclaimed doom to the people of Israel. Today, we read the prophecy of one of Amos’ contemporaries, Hosea, who also proclaims a painful experience. And my sermons, I’m afraid, are a bit like oxycodone or percocet. They inevitably try to alleviate the wound of the prophetic words.

And so this confession is also an invitation. Don’t rest easy in any tidy message I can conjure up. I invite you to reread these texts again on your own. Confront the pain of the prophet’s incisive words. They should not be easy. If a prophet’s words are easily understood and accepted, then they’re not cutting us as they should.

Prophetic Complements: Amos and Hosea

The last two weeks, we heard from the prophet Amos. Amos, remember, was a shepherd and farmer. We can imagine that he would have been a practical sort of man. He would have cared about getting things done. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, his prophecy projects a down-to-earth, knitty-gritty outlook on life. He characterizes the people’s sin as social injustice. “Hear this, you who trample the needy,” he shouts, “and bring to ruin the poor of the land” (Amos 8:4).

Hosea, on the other hand, strikes me as the perfect complement to Amos. Whereas Amos would be an outdoors sort of fellow, working with the animals, speaking common sense at the town gate, I would imagine that Hosea’s a bit bookish, that he has a poet’s heart. Whereas Amos cares about deeds, Hosea reflects on the inner heart where deeds are born. While Amos describes the sin of Israel as injustice, Hosea describes it as infidelity. For him, the people’s sin is a wayward heart.

Maybe the Story Is a Little Messier

Today’s scripture gives us a succinct and juicy summary of Hosea’s prophetic career. It all starts when God says to Hosea, “Go, marry a prostitute. Have some kids. Because Israel is playing the prostitute with me” (cf. Hos 1:2).

I must confess. I have my doubts about this account of Hosea’s prophetic career. Was it all that straightforward? Did Hosea just wake up one day and hear the voice of God as clearly as he heard the birds outside, saying, “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom?” (1:2)? I certainly wouldn’t want to say what God can or cannot do. But I cannot help but think that maybe the story is a little messier than this.[1]

I have come to appreciate just how real the stories of the Bible can be, how the stories of Abraham and King David and Ruth, the disciples and Peter and Paul, are somehow the stories of our own lives. And so part of me, at least, thinks that what happened to Hosea on that fateful day is something a lot like what happens to us. One day, Hosea invited a friend over for dinner—unsuspectingly, fatefully. That friend brought another friend, Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim. Hosea liked Gomer. Simple as that. They courted. Married. Had kids. Then things got complicated—as things tend to do. The details aren’t really that important. All that’s important is that Hosea one day learns of Gomer’s infidelity. And it tears him apart.

Everything suddenly becomes a mirror of his misery. Worst of all, his own children. When he looks into their eyes, he sees his wife, Gomer—which is to say, he sees his own rejection. He feels the bitterness of betrayal. He looks at one child and he asks himself, “Can I ever forgive her?” (cf. 1:6-7). He looks at another and asks, “Was I ever hers? Was she ever mine?” (cf. 1:9).

A Small Dose of Homiletic Hydrocodone

Okay. I think now’s the time for a small dose of homiletic hydrocodone, a brief comedic interlude away from the painful story of Hosea.

I have a good friend, Tim, who played soccer with me growing up. My dad was the coach for a number of years. And Tim gave my dad all sorts of grief. My dad had this habit of literally biting his tongue when he was unhappy…and Tim gave him reason to bite his tongue more than once. Not listening to instructions. Cracking jokes during serious speeches. He was our team clown, I suppose.

Anyway, I recently caught up with Tim, and he shared that he has started coaching a soccer team of his own. He complained, though, about the little goofballs on his team who kept interrupting practice. And then it hit him: “You know, I guess I was a little bit like that when I was a kid. Man, I must have drove your dad crazy!” Music to my dad’s ears.

The Echo of Experience:
Hosea’s and God’s Sorrow

We’ve all probably had realizations like this, where a new experience opens our heart to a more sympathetic understanding of the world. My friends who are new parents, for instance, suddenly reflect on the troubles they may have caused their parents. New teachers, I know, sometimes reflect on what kind of student they may have been. A new experience often enlarges the heart. It invites empathy for others who have shared that experience.

As painful as Hosea’s experience was, I think that somewhere within his heart it sparked a prophetic revelation. Somewhere amid the ashes of his experience, a profound prophetic sympathy was born for God.

In Hosea’s time, Israel was politically promiscuous. They would bat their eyes first in the direction of Assyria, then towards Egypt. In either case, Hosea said, their heart was misplaced. They were putting faith in the power or protection of other people, rather than in the God who had given them life.

Hosea empathizes with God. Somewhere in his prophetic heart, he realizes that his sorrow somehow echoes the sorrow of God.[2] Just as Hosea looks at his children and questions the possibility of forgiveness and reunion, so too he imagines God looking at Israel and, in a moment of anguish, saying, lo-ruhamah, “I will not have pity,” and lo-ammi, “You are not my people” (1:6-9). And just as Hosea must desire somewhere in the depths of his heart, forgiveness and reunion—even if these things never came about in his life—so too he senses a divine desire for these things. And in the end, in the last verse of today’s scripture, Hosea envisions God gathering Israel into God’s arms once more.

The Yes Inside a No:
The Gospel in a Nutshell

The difficulty in reading a prophecy like Hosea’s, a prophecy that is founded on such an intensely personal experience, is that if we ourselves haven’t shared that experience, then we risk missing out on the prophecy’s depth of feeling and its experiential truth.

But we need not have married a prostitute in ancient Israel to know something of what Hosea felt.

Some time back, I wrote these words about a very different sorrowful experience: “It is the most tender pain I know / to feel the yes inside a no.” Reading those words now, I wonder if Hosea didn’t feel something similar. What is sorrow, if not the yes inside a no, the hope for something that is missing? Is this not the sorrow of God that echoed in the sorrow of Hosea? Is this not the sorrow that we all feel? Haven’t we all felt the tender pain of the yes inside a no, where we have sensed a goodness that somehow endures within and beyond an inconsolable sadness?

Perhaps a close friend or family member passes away. Death says no to their life among us, but somewhere within that no there is a yes whispered in hope, a yes that affirms that even though they die, they will live (cf. John 11:25).

Perhaps we cannot see eye to eye with a friend, and a relationship is irreparably fractured or lost. Dispute says no to our friendship, but somewhere within that no there is a yes murmured that cannot help but bless the estranged friend, that cannot help but love him or her despite the irreconcilable differences.

I say all this not to reduce the heart of God to our own small hearts. There are certainly extensions of our sorrow that God does not share, like our petty quests for personal satisfaction or revenge. I say all this, rather, in the hope that it might enlarge our heart to the experience of God. If the prophecy of Hosea is any indication, then something of the sorrow that we feel in our personal tragedies is a holy echo of the heart of God. Something of what we feel points us toward the divine yes—the holy mysteries of forgiveness and love, peace and the justice of restoration.

This holy echo of the heart of God is what we see lived in the flesh of Jesus. Jesus felt the full brunt of the world’s “No,” and yet the gospel, the good news is that he persists in saying, “Yes.”

The “yes” inside a “no” is what Hosea felt in his relationship with Homer. It is what God felt in God’s relationship with Israel. It is the very life of Christ. It is the gospel in a nutshell: the good news that our sorrow echoes a divine sorrow, and that within that divine sorrow, echoes the forgiveness and love and peace that is redeeming all sorrow.

Prayer

Loving God,
Who takes on flesh,
Who shares our sorrows and joys—
Enlarge our hearts.
Help us to hear the holy echoes
Of your heart among ours,
Pointing us toward the way of Christ,
The way of the cross,
The yes that is redeeming every no.
Amen.


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[1] The inspiration for this imaginative interpretation comes from Abraham Heschel’s observation that Hosea’s experience would have meant little as a prophetic performance. From the outside, it would be little more than a public spectacle. Its prophetic meaning resides in its experiential truth. Hosea’s experience would have meant most to Hosea. Somewhere in his experience, he encountered a prophetic revelation, and from there were born his words to the people of Israel. Cf. Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Perennial, 2001), 47-75.

[2] Cf. Heschel, The Prophets, 69: “The event stirred and shocked the life of Hosea regardless of its effect upon public opinion. It concerned him personally at the deepest level and had a meaning of the highest significance for his own life. As time went by, Hosea became aware of the fact that his personal fate was a mirror of the divine pathos, that his sorrow echoed the sorrow of God.”

Sunday 17 July 2016

Whose Side Is God on? (Amos 8:1-12)



(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 17, 2016, Proper 11)

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NFL Theology

If you follow football, or are at least a dedicated Super Bowl viewer, then you are likely familiar with what we might jokingly call NFL theology. According to a survey taken a year ago, around one in four Americans believes that God determines the outcome of the Super Bowl. An even greater percentage—one in two Americans—believes that God rewards faithful athletes with strength and success.[1] According to NFL theology, then, God does in fact take sides. A holy energy hijacks some bodies more than others, propelling them to greater heights and a greater likelihood of victory.

NFL theology creeps into the church from time to time. I’ve never personally heard a prayer in church that solicits supernatural assistance for one team or another. But I know these prayers happen. Jack once told me about a church where the elders would occasionally implore the divine to deliver victory to the hometown team. How that would inspire unity around the Table, I have no idea! I’d imagine it would do just the opposite, at least in a place like our own, where allegiances are split between the Wahoos and the Hokies and a number of others.

I suspect that NFL theology makes a number of us feel a bit queasy. Does God really sport athletic allegiance? To the question, “Whose side is God on?” we might respond, “Hold on! Does God even take sides?” And not without good reason. Just a few weeks back, we marinated our souls in the mind of Paul, who proclaimed that in Christ there is “neither Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female”; in Christ, we are all one (Gal 3:28). Elsewhere Paul makes the celebrated claim that “God shows no partiality” (Rom 2:11). And Paul himself is only drawing from the more ancient theology that God created all of humanity in God’s image, blessing all of them alike.

Our unease with NFL theology is nothing new. It finds an intriguing echo, in fact, in our country’s history. During the Civil War, countless ministers on both sides of the battle lines invoked a more serious sort of NFL theology; both claimed God’s allegiance to their cause. It was in fact the president, Abraham Lincoln, who voiced qualms with this sectarian theology: “Both [sides],” he said, “read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes [God’s] aid against the other. … The prayers of…neither [have] been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”[2] For Lincoln, God could not be bought by extra prostrations or extra long prayers. God did not take sides.

A God Who Rushes to the Side of the Hurting

I am sympathetic to Lincoln’s understanding of God. Surely God is disentangled from our personal agendas. Surely God is impartial, above our petty disputes. Surely God blesses everyone and desires the goodness of life for everyone, not just a select few.

And yet…I must also admit that this picture of an impartial God seems incomplete. It lacks soul. It lacks the warmth and compassion of love. This picture of God remains impersonal, a bit like the sun or the moon or the elements of life that nourish us but that also seem at times cold and aloof and uncaring.

And this is where Amos steps in. Amos fleshes this picture of God out. Amos shows us a God with a heartbeat, full of compassion and care and desire. Amos shows us a God who takes sides. Not in a competitive or tribalistic way, not in a way that aligns God with a football team or a political party or a nation. God takes sides in the way that a mother or father rushes to the side of the child who is hurting most, in the way that a shepherd might take leave of the 99 to rush to the side of the one who is lost.

Which Side, Then?

The holy rumbling in Amos’ prophetic heart is for the poor. Twice Amos cries out on behalf of the poor, twice he howls out in support of the needy. “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land,” you who exploit the poor and needy through high prices and then buy them into slavery for their undeserved debts: “Shall not the land tremble on this account?” (cf. 8:4, 6, 8). Amos is not simply a spoilsport, a prophetic party pooper who delights in proclaiming doom. He is not prescribing a divine punishment for bad behavior. He is pointing out that God is rushing to the side of God’s children who are hurting the most, that at this moment in time God’s heart spills out for them. And he is explaining that the natural consequence of neglecting the poor is social disintegration. Ancient Israel will be undone by its own hand.

Such a prophecy echoes in our own nation’s history, in fact. In a moment of prophetic boldness, Abraham Lincoln once proclaimed, “If destruction be our lot, we [ourselves will] be its author and finisher.”[3] When we neglect one another, when we take up arms against one another, we will hasten our own demise. And all the while, God will be shedding tears over the victims—the poor and the oppressed and the crushed.

God on the Side of the Suffering

During Amos’ time, believe it or not, many Israelites subscribed to a sort of NFL theology. Obviously they didn’t know about the Skins or the Cowboys. But they did know about the Israelites and the Egyptians, and all the other peoples. And they believed that God chose sides just the same way some people believe God supports one team and not another. Isn’t that what the story of the Exodus is all about? God looks out upon the Israelites suffering in Egypt, and God is moved by their cries, and so God delivers them from slavery and then chooses them—and not the Egyptians, not anyone else—to be the people of God.

Now, this belief contains within it a scandalous truth. God undeniably took the side of the Israelites in Egypt. But whereas the Israelites interpreted this to mean, “God chose us, God chose the Israelites”—which is a sort of NFL theology—Amos proclaims otherwise. Amos effectively says, “God does take sides, yes. But back there in Egypt, God wasn’t taking the side of the Israelites only and forever. God was taking the side of the suffering, which back then happened to be us Israelites.” To prove his point in shocking fashion, Amos later prophesies that Israel is nothing special; it has no special claim to divine privilege. Because, in fact, God has delivered other nations just like Israel. It’s what God has always been doing: saving the suffering. This hidden gem in the Bible is one worth remembering. Amos 9:7-8. “Did I not bring up…the Philistines from Caphtor,” Amos says for God, “and the Arameans from Kir?” (9:7). Even the Philistines, Amos says. God has rushed to the side of even the Philistines.

The Gospel as It Always Has Been

The gospel has never changed. God is always rushing to the side of the marginalized and the victimized, the vulnerable and the helpless. In Egypt, God heard the cries of the Israelites in slavery and delivered them. At some point in history, God saw the suffering Philistines and rushed to their side. In Amos, God cries out on behalf of the lowly and left-out. Just a few weeks ago, we read Paul proclaim blessing on the marginalized of his day, the Gentiles. And of course, this gospel takes on flesh and bones in the person of Jesus Christ, who identifies himself with the hungry and the naked and the imprisoned and the stranger, who proclaims that poor, of all people, are blessed.

Consider what good news this gospel is! A child who is hurting doesn’t need a mother or father who says, abstractly, theoretically, “I love everyone.” A child who is hurting needs a mother or father who will rush to his side, or her side, and say, “I love you.” And that is the gospel: the gospel of Israel, the gospel of Amos, the gospel of Paul, and the gospel embodied by Jesus.

And that gospel is what gives a heart to a heartless world. It is the heartbeat of the body of Christ. It is the lifeblood of the church. It is the passion in which we live and move and have our being. We rush to the side of the lowly and the left-out, the people pushed to the margins of society, the folks who are of little account to a world that prizes the richest and the most powerful, because this is where we will encounter God. Through CARITAS and our drives for school and food supplies, we rush to the side of the poor; through our hula ministry, we rush to the side the elderly; through D.D.’s Bears, we rush to the side of the sick; through Church World Service’s refugee resettlement program, we rush to the side of the stranger.

A Politics of Love;
Or, the Many Faces of Christ in Our World

I don’t say these ministries in order to check off a box on our ministry task list or to give us a gold star sticker, but rather to remind us of the many faces of Christ in our world. And there are many more. Recently I read a report that there were more acts of violence and vandalism against Muslims in the United States in the last year than in any year since the September 11 attack. In this past month alone, during the Muslims’ holy time of Ramadan, there were numerous reports of abuse and threats against mosques and their worshippers.

The temptation today is to get caught up in this world’s politics of force, which seeks security at the expense of people who look different and who pose the possibility of a threat. But the gospel that we read today, which is a gospel we read all over the Bible, proclaims instead a politics of love, a politics that rushes to the side of the lowly and the left-out, that takes the side of the weak and the vulnerable.

The question, “Whose side is God on?” inevitably leads to the question, “Whose side are we on?” Are we seeking to secure our own life by siding with people whom we know and like, which is just to say, by siding with ourselves, or are we rushing to the sides of the strangers who are hurting? Because it is with them—according to Amos and Israel, Paul and Jesus—that we encounter the life-changing God.

Prayer

God of the poor and needy,
The Philistines and the Arameans;
Christ of the hungry and the sick,
The imprisoned and the stranger and the Muslim—
You are reconciling all people
By the wonder of Your love.
Enlist us in Your cause.
Touch us with Your grace,
And take us to the sides
Where You are rushing.
Amen.


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[1] Amy Schaeffer, “God Determines Who Wins the Superbowl,” http://www.inquisitr.com/1799215/god-determines-who-wins-super-bowl-27-percent-of-americans-think-so-study/, accessed July 14, 2016.

[2] Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html, accessed July 14, 2016.

[3] Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address.”

Sunday 10 July 2016

A Treasonous Faith (Amos 7:7-17)



(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 10, 2016, Proper 10)

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Unbearable Words at the Center of Power

The first thing you need to know about Amos is that he’s a country bumpkin of a prophet. He’s a shepherd and farmer from the south, but today we find him prophesying in the north. In ancient Israel, there was a north-south divide, comparable in fact to the north-south divide that we have in our own nation. And so the situation in which Amos finds himself would be a little bit like if a good old boy from Texas moseyed up to D. C. or New York, and once he got there, proclaimed that God was unhappy with the way they were living. What kind of response would he get? Honestly, probably not much of a response at all. Amidst the hustle and bustle of a city consumed in its own business, the words of a street preacher are more or less tolerated, ignored, or even viewed as a form of entertainment.

Reading through Amos, I get the sense that he has received a response similar to the one that our country boy from Texas would have received. Up until today (chapter 7), there is no mention of anyone around him responding.

But today Amos touches a nerve. Today his dark prophecies become “unbearable” (cf. 7:10). Today they turn treasonous, for his words today threaten the downfall of the establishment, both religious and political. First he proclaims: “The high places…shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste” (7:9). This would be like our cowboy from Texas declaring that all the churches in the north would bite the dust. Next, Amos speaks for God, saying, “I will rise against the house of [the king] Jeroboam with the sword” (7:9). This would be like our country boy promising that the White House and all its close associates, including Wall Street, would fall.

Speak like that, and people will take notice. Speak like that, and there might be whispers and rumors that you’re a terrorist. That seems to be the case for Amos, because immediately after he makes these dark prophecies, a priest sends a message to the king Jeroboam, accusing Amos of treason, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel” (7:10). We aren’t told how the king responds, but we can imagine it’s not too favorably. The priest tells Amos to “flee,” to leave quickly, which suggests perhaps that the priest is having a bit of mercy, that he’s telling Amos to save his own skin while he still has time.

And the priest tacks on a final warning, and this perhaps speaks loudest of all in our scripture today. He says, “Never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary” (7:13). The place name Bethel means “house of God” in the Hebrew. And so there is a scandalous irony in the priest’s words. Really, he is saying, “Don’t you ever dare speak these words of God again in the house of God. It is the king’s sanctuary.” Regardless of what the priest meant, his words reflect the reality that God is no longer the leader of this people. God is now the servant of the king. The word of God is only acceptable if it performs the purposes of the powers-that-be.

Elvis Versus the Television

But that was a very different day and a very different place. Do Amos’ words still speak to us where we are now? Are there any modern day prophets who speak for the country bumpkin of Judah, who transpose his prophecy to our day and age?

I have one playful suggestion—and all I ask is that you humor me long enough to get the point across: the king himself, Elvis Presley.

If you go to Graceland and peruse the relics of the hip-swiveling king of rock and roll, one of the items you’ll see is a television that’s been shot right down the middle. There is a legend, accordingly, that Elvis shot his television. And as with any legend, there are several unverified versions of the story that try to explain just what motivated the event. Perhaps this television is just a testament to Elvis’ unorthodox method of appliance repair. (I’m sure a number of us can identify with this method in theory, if not in practice.) One Graceland spokesman implied this idea with his statement of regret that this television is “the only surviving…appliance that Elvis shot out.”[1]

But the version that fascinates me speculates on an entirely different motivation. According to this thread of the legend, the king was actually reading his Bible in front of the TV. Upon reading 1 Corinthians 13, that beautiful chapter on love—“love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”—Elvis had a “light-bulb” moment, an “ah-hah” flash of clarity. And without a second’s hesitation, he grabbed a gun and shot at the seductive images invading his home.[2]

Despite my deep misgivings over the place of guns in our society, this legendary event captivates me. It’s a mystifying act, rich in symbolic possibility. What exactly was Elvis shooting at? I would suggest that in a very profound sense, he was shooting at the heart of a nation. I would suggest that, like Amos, he was conspiring against the nation, against the very center of its power. Because these days—and I imagine that even in Elvis’ time, it wasn’t too different—the television along with its social media cousins is the ultimate authority. It is the center of power and money and fame. Seekers and holders of public office must buy their way onto its airwaves in order to gain our recognition and approval. It is the shopping window of our nation. It is the stage of make-or-break for celebrities.

The Television and Its Polarizing Power

One of the early presidents of CBS News, Fred Friendly, had high aspirations for TV journalism. He believed that the television could be an influential instrument for positive social change. In his words, the job of the journalist should be “to make the agony of decision-making so intense that you can only escape it by thinking.” He envisioned the day when television would capture those rare and enlightening moments when people changed their minds or conceded a point in conversation.[3]

I imagine that Fred Friendly would be appalled with social media these days. In the wake of this past week’s tragedies—Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, and Dallas—television and all of social media have greedily consumed the stories and then pitched them back to us in a collage of foregone conclusions, a hodgepodge of polarizing sound bites and divisive talking points. In doing so, they polarize us. The beacons of power and money and fame in our world—those glowing screens that sit in our living rooms and bedrooms and flash across our telephones—they seduce us with the false gospel of certainty and taking sides and winning arguments and feeling safe and secure behind slogans and battle cries. They reduce life to a combat zone of mutually exclusive and competing interests. They weave us a story of war and arm us to the teeth with uncompromising sound bites and catchphrases and watchwords.

The Hidden Gospel of Amos:
Living the Answer

The gospel that I hear hidden in Amos’ prophecy, a gospel that speaks to us today, is two-sided. On the one side, it is good news that sounds nothing like good news. It sounds like difficult news. Faith must waltz into the very center of power—the very heart of how things are done—and proclaim treasonous words. Like Elvis ridding himself of the television glowing in his living room, or like Amos proclaiming the social injustices of Israel and the catastrophic consequences that would naturally result, faith must renounce the ruling way of the day, and set foot on a completely different way.

And it’s here, on this different way, that the good news starts to sound like good news. The gospel underneath all of Amos’ proclamations of doom, is a gospel that hopes for change. It is the good news that the answer is not something we can know or possess or claim for our own—it’s not a slogan or a battle cry or a position. The answer is something that we live. It’s a face-to-face, flesh-and-blood way of life. It’s a love that really does believe and bear all things—even the feelings and desires of others with whom we might feel aggrieved.

I recently read a short story that embodies this gospel. An African-American mother of two young children had a holy conviction that the tragedies repeatedly trumpeted on the news would never cease or change unless people went beyond the polarizing sound bites and divisive battle cries, unless they actually lived the answer themselves. And so one day at the supermarket, when she saw a police car idling in the parking lot, she gathered up her courage and moseyed on up to the officer. She greeted him. Told him her two kids were terrified of police and she didn’t know how to change that. They carried on in a good-natured conversation for half an hour, and at the end, the officer gave two badges to her kids. As she was pulling out of the parking lot, one of her kids reflected, “He was actually a nice guy.”

We Are Prophets of a Future Not Our Own

I know—that’s only one heartwarming story. How can it stand up to the enormous power of polarization and conflict streaming through the screens all around us?

But the real question, I think, is how will this present age ever change if we do not allow the kingdom of God to take hold of our own lives?

A martyr dear to my heart, Salvadoran Oscar Romero, says it better than I ever could:

“The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. … Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom”—this act of treason in which faith conscripts us—“always lies beyond us. … [What we do] may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. … We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”

Prayer

God of a kingdom
That will one day
Eclipse our wildest dreams
And redeem and reconcile us all—
Embolden us to conspire against
The ruling powers
That polarize the world.
Inspire us to forge
Flesh-and-blood relationships
Of kingdom-love and -peace.
Amen.


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[1] Associated Press, “Nighttime Elvis on Display,” http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/22/entertainment/et-quick22.1, accessed July 6, 2016.

[2] David Dark, The Gospel according to America: A Meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 10.

[3] Dark, The Gospel according to America, 27-28.

Sunday 3 July 2016

An Unruly Rule (Gal 6:7-16)



(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on July 3, 2016, Proper 9)

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“Paul Takes on the Law”

Some stories in the Bible lend themselves to the big screen. The story of Joseph and his brothers, as we have seen in the wonderfully animated The Prince of Egypt. Moses and the great exodus, as we have sees in the now-timeless classic, The Ten Commandments. The life and death and resurrection of Jesus, as we have seen in countless renditions.

Galatians, on the other hand, does very little to suggest that it could ever make the big screen. But if a producer were ever to get the idea—and that’s a huge “if”—then the first thing she would need to do is to settle on a much more riveting movie title than Galatians. If it were up to me, I’d suggest something simple and concise, something that communicates the letter’s drama in a single sentence. Something like Paul Takes on the Law.

Because for nearly the entire letter, Paul takes the law to task. The law has us under an inescapable “curse,” he says (3:10-13). He charges the law with keeping us “imprisoned” (3:23). The law, he warns us, ultimately means death (cf. 2:19).

For Paul, what gives us life is not a bunch of “do’s” and “don’t’s.” What gives us life is God in Christ. If you ask a theologian what the letter to the Galatians is really about, he would probably answer you in stately theological language. “Galatians,” he would say, “is all about the doctrine of justification by faith alone.” Which is really just a fancy way of saying, Galatians is about life: not the life we can make for ourselves, not the life that results from following the rules like a robot follows its programmed maneuvers—but the life that is inspired by Jesus. For Paul, what gives us life is God in Christ, who says, “I believe in you, I have faith in you—in fact, I’m declaring you righteous right now” (cf. 2:16, 20).[1]

Consider for a moment a teacher or a parent who was or has been a particular inspiration for you. What was most inspiring about them? Was it the rules they imposed on you, or a program of reward and punishment? Or was it simply the fact that beyond all of that, they believed in you; they hoped the best for you; they trusted in their heart of hearts that you really would do great things?

Take that belief, that trust, and amplify it to a divine level, and you will have what Paul is talking about in Galatians. The faith of Christ is nothing other than this divine declaration that we are good and righteous and that God wants the world for us. That is what gives us life. Not the law.

What Rule, Paul?

And that is also why today’s scripture initially puzzled me. As Paul is concluding his case against the law and his proclamation of life through the faith of Christ, he writes these words: “As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy” (6:16). “This rule”? What rule, Paul? Forgive me if I’ve misheard, but aren’t rules the very thing you’ve been railing against this entire letter? I thought you were against the law, not for it. I thought you said that living by rules alone sucks the life out of life.

If Paul could respond to my question, I imagine he would impatiently shake his head and point me back a verse, where he writes, “A new creation is everything.” I imagine he would excitedly exclaim to me, “This is a different kind of a rule. It is an unruly rule, a lawless law.”

Beyond a Paint-by-Numbers World

I’ve heard it said by someone here in our congregation that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. And I think that’s a perfect summary of how Paul views the law and order of this world. The law is like a paint-by-numbers picture. If you do it perfectly, you’ll have a pretty picture. But if that’s all you ever do, then that generic, paint-by-numbers picture is all you’ll ever get.

And Paul has his heart set on something much greater than a paint-by-numbers picture of the world. Paul knows full well the story of creation—how everything was good. But when he looks out on the best that the law and order of his day can do, he sees a creation that is not always good: sick bodies, broken relationships, oppressive social systems. Rules will not fix this. Merely coloring inside the lines will not fix this. Only new life can renew creation. And Paul is so excited because he’s felt this new life, he’s been inspired by no doing of his own, and all through Christ. For Paul, the way of Christ is a way beyond the law. It is the way of new creation.

And indeed, the way of Christ is no simple paint-by-numbers picture. Painting-by-numbers will only get the world what it’s always got, and Jesus wants more, so much more. The rule of new creation that he embodies is a rule that sometimes goes outside the lines. It is a rule that stands up to the rules of the world in hope of renewing the world. Jesus continually challenges the social, religious, and political authorities of his day. He does not obey the social order that puts men above women, masters above slaves, or Jews above Samaritans and Gentiles. He confronts the religious order, calling it to task for knowing the law so well and yet so rarely living it out. He even upsets the order of the ruling empire. He baffles the Romans with the proclamation of a kingdom where Caesar is not Lord, a kingdom that operates in an entirely different way, where somehow the other is more important than the self. Whereas the Roman empire would say, “If you want peace, get ready for war,” Jesus would say things like, “Turn the other cheek,” and, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:39, 44).

New Creation by Way of the Cross

If Paul had to summarize the unruly rule of new creation that Christ lives for us, he would choose one word, as he does in today’s scripture: “May I never boast of anything except the cross” (6:14). The cross. The word does not sound so strange to us today, for whom the cross is as casual as a sports player’s gesture or an item of jewelry. But in the time of Jesus and Paul, the cross was an unspeakable thing. Literally. Cicero once wrote: Let “the very word ‘cross’….be far removed from not only the bodies of Roman citizens but even from their thoughts, their eyes, and their ears.”[2] For Paul to keep saying the word—much less for him to claim that the cross is the very thing that will heal our broken world—was absolutely ludicrous in his time. Baptist minister Clarence Jordan, who lived much of his life seeking racial reconciliation in the South, tried to recapture the craziness of a gospel of the cross. In his mind, here’s what Paul would have said had he grown up in the American South: “God forbid that I should ever take pride in anything, except the lynching of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[3]

And the crazy thing is, the lynching tree of our Lord does not mean death but life. It means “a new creation.” The lynching tree is the unruly rule of God’s love, which colors outside the lines, which cares not for our world’s conventions and classifications but for justice and mercy, forgiveness and hope, for everything that blesses and renews a broken world. The lynching tree of our Lord shows just how far this unruly rule of God’s love will go. No law can stand in its way.

The unruly rule of our Lord’s love, which we see in its fullest form on the lynching tree, restores every broken thing in creation. It does not color by number, which is to say, it is not deterred by the boundaries of law and order, threat and punishment, preconception and prejudice. Instead, it is doing something very different than what we’ve been doing, and getting us far more than we’ve got. It embraces every enemy, it lifts up the least and the littlest, it welcomes every stranger, it forgives every offense, it sanctifies every sorrow and suffering, it reconciles every division.

By the unruly rule of love, everything becomes a new creation. And in the ecstatic words of Paul, “A new creation is everything!”

Prayer 

Christ of the cross,
Lord of the lynching tree—
Lead us beyond the law,
Beyond expectations and judgments,
Beyond prejudice and preconception
That keep getting us what we’ve got.
May we live into your love,
Where all things are being made new.
Amen.


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[1] This imagined declaration is based on the more literal translation of pistis christou as “faith of Christ.” This little phrase, in other words, centers faith not on us, not on something we do—which would ultimately subsume faith under the law—but rather on what Christ does for us. Christ has faith in us, even as we are, and so inspires in us a life of which it can be said, “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”

[2] Cicero, Pro Rabirio Postump 16.

[3] Clarence Jordan, The Cotton Patch Gospel: Paul’s Epistles (repr.; Macon, GA: Smith & Helwys, 2004), 101.